Rain, rain go away, come back another day

Los Angeles weather is generally sunny and warm year round! It spoils me so much and I love it. Everywhere else this time of year it’s raining and freezing. Not so today though! It’s actually raining outside. I’m not very keen on biking home even though it’s pretty close by. I have my laptop on me and no waterproof bag! The side effect of having good weather almost all the time is that I forget to watch out for days when we have bad weather. It was a habit before I moved out here but since then I only check every now and then.

I should’ve prepared for this in case it did happen. Right now my backup plan is to get my husband to come pick me up so I don’t arrive home sodden. Luckily I live close enough that it’s easy for him to swing by on the way home. No big deal here. This negates the reasons why I bike to work though. I won’t be getting the exercise and my husband will use the gas I saved today.

I had a backup plan though! Always a good idea to have one just in case things do go wrong. In the personal finance world the usual plan b is to use an emergency fund. What about investments and your retirement though? There are quite a few items dealing with money that you can’t fix with a good emergency fund.

Do the research
Last night I should’ve checked the weather carefully to see if it would rain or not today. I didn’t bother so I’m paying the consequences for not looking. I could’ve driven my car today to avoid this from happening. I could be all comfy and warm at home right now instead of still at work.

Always do the research before investing any money or putting your money into a retirement account. With large sums of money that you can’t backup you need to know that your money is going to a place that will take care of it. There are some pretty bad stocks and funds out there that will tank pretty quickly. Bye bye money!

Be prepared
I certainly wasn’t prepared today! I should’ve at least brought an umbrella with me. Better yet a poncho! I have plenty of umbrellas lying around at home but no ponchos. Then again how would I use an umbrella while biking? If my only option was to bike to work every single day then I would need to buy a poncho. Luckily it’s not my only option.

In terms of money it’s good to be prepared of what would happen if the worse does come up. No matter what it will be a big blow and of course just suck. Expect the worst and hope for the best. It’s good to be optimistic but you should at least know what could happen if things went wrong. It won’t blindside you as much and hopefully you can better handle a bad situation.

Have a backup plan
My plan b is stuck in traffic right now because people in LA don’t know how to drive in the rain. They’re either scared and go super slow, or they drive like normal and skid around. Either way it creates a lot more traffic than the usual.

With finances don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Basically meaning don’t have all your money in one type of asset or only in one account. If anything happens then all your money won’t be wiped out. Some people also like having an emergency fund. My husband and I like having one since it provides us security and gives us a backup plan for those things you can’t predict.

For now I’m stuck until my husband gets here. It’ll most likely take twice as long as possible because of all the bad drivers in LA getting in his way. It’s good to know I do have some plan b for when it rains and for my financial health.